


Get Over The Wall

by Piggles



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, F/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27267304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piggles/pseuds/Piggles
Summary: There's nothing more confusing in a person's life than their first breakup. The how, the why, the misery, the anger. The picking up the pieces of your life and finding that some pieces are missing now. Mike is busy piecing his life back together when the missing pieces come knocking.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

Love is complicated. 

Mike had not loved someone for a long time. He was beginning to forget what the feeling was really like, and it was almost comforting. He wanted to forget, he wanted to move past the feelings, good and bad, that lingered in his stomach like mushrooms picked off a pizza. They were always there, inside of him, in the back of his head or the front of his heart; a tingling, sometimes a sharp pain in his side, or an airy feeling floating behind his eyes. It was always something, when all Mike wanted was nothing. 

Staring at the blue glow of his computer screen did little to temper Mike’s appetite for sulking. Writer’s block. Maybe a bit more than that. Writer’s blockage? Like something clogged in a drain. All the good ideas and clever prose were backed up somewhere in his creative pipe. He just wanted to stick his arm down there and pull free whatever was stuck. It’s hard to solve things in the literal, though, when you only understand them in the figurative. 

A new routine was what he needed. It had been the same routine for the last few months and obviously something needed to change. Ever since the publication of his debut novel,  _ The Pride of Mystery and the Prejudice of Innocence _ , his publisher had been yanking on the proverbial chain to get Mike back in front of a keyboard. The novel was a hit, Mike was a household name in less than a week. Now, two months later, he was a fledgling name dangling by the thread of fate. In one more month his publisher would be asking him for the details of his next novel, the first chapter, major character names, significant plot points, the beginning, middle, and end, and everything in between. It took nearly a decade, from 8th grade when he’d conceptualized his novel and all of its components, to two months ago when it was published. Almost an entire decade to churn out one measly story, and now one measly month to churn out an entire story. 

Mike huffed. What stupid thoughts, all of them. A new routine was the only thing that would bring him back. No more waking up with coffee around noon, lazing on the balcony for most of the afternoon, so that he might fall asleep on the couch in the late evening watching the latest on Netflix. It was lazy.  _ He  _ was lazy. No wonder it took nine fucking years to write one god damn book! 

It was her fault. He wasn’t like this before her. 

The phone was ringing and he’d only just noticed. He didn’t bother to check the caller ID before answering; he was impassioned at the idea of company. 

“Hello?” 

“Mike!” Nancy, his sister. “Mike, how are you?” 

Mike Wheeler took one look at the empty word document staring back at him and decided to lie. “I’m great, obviously. Your brother is living it up in Seattle, Nance, why wouldn’t he be amazing?” 

“Because my brother is a terrible liar and that’s why all his little mystery stories sucked back when we were kids.” 

“Well it’s a good thing we aren’t kids anymore, ain’t it, Nance.” 

She didn’t laugh. It wasn’t a joke, really, but Mike was expecting a laugh. Nancy was always laughing at what her little brother had to say, but not this time. This time Mike had to do real detective work, solve a real mystery. 

“Is everything okay?” he asked when they’d both let the silence linger too long. 

“Yeah! I mean, yeah everything is fine. Jonathan and I are home right now. We decided to come visit Mom. She said you haven’t called in a few months.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve just been busy, you know? I had to do the press tour for the book and as soon as I got back they had me working on my next masterpiece. It’s been a whirlwind of activity, tell her I’m sorry. In fact, put her on, I have time to chat right now.” 

“She’s out.” A short pause. “And that’s not really why I’m calling.” 

Oh? “Oh. Okay, um, what’s going on?”

Another pause. So many pauses Mike felt like he was listening to a scratched CD. There  _ was  _ a scratch. Something happened. 

“Nance?” 

“El’s gone, Mike. No one knows where she is.” 

With great effort and exercise of will, his phone remained in his hand. The sharp pain in his side had returned. 

“Okay, so? What’s that have to do with me?” 

“You were the last person to talk to her. Everyone in town thinks the police should bring you in for questioning. They think--”

“That’s impossible. It’s been three months, you’re telling me she didn’t talk to anyone else in three months? Max? Stacey? Uh, that, uh, one girl from Starbucks? They worked together or something. That’s three people right there!” 

“Okay! Jeez, you don’t have to yell. No one’s accusing you of anything, not yet at least. I just wanted you to hear it from me first before anyone else calls.” They both sighed inwardly at the thought of who was going to call next. “Just take care of yourself, don’t do anything stupid, the usual cliches. Probably best if you let this one blow over, maybe don’t come and visit for a while. Jonathan and I are going to stay for a few days to help mom around the house, then it’s back to Toronto.”

“Toronto? I thought you two just moved in on Scelli Street? That was, like, last year.” 

“Two years ago, actually, but I’m glad you’re keeping up.” 

Mike cursed himself. “Did you at least get the gift basket we--er, um,  _ I  _ sent you?” 

“Yes, and then we tried to call you to thank you but you never called back. Remember?” 

“Oh, right.” He did not remember. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that, Nance. You know I would’ve gotten back to you if I wasn’t so--” 

“So busy, I know, Mike. It’s fine. Just don’t say anything stupid or implicating when he calls, you know he’s going to fuck with you. It’s been a long time since you two talked, try not to let everything, you know, go to your head or what not. Be good.” He could hear his mother in Nancy’s shaky voice. Why hadn’t she been the one to call? Why was Nancy even there? 

“Thanks, Nance. I will. Say hi to mom and Holly for me.” 

They bid each other farewell and Mike hung up the phone feeling something different in his side now. An anxiety of sorts prickling just on the surface of his skin. It was a different feeling from the constant anxiety that seemed to loom over these last few months; it was an urgent anxiety. 

Mike didn’t have to wait long for that next call to come through. He took his time while answering, preparing a greeting in his head, mapping out what he thought would be discussed, psyching himself up for any confrontation, the usual make-up routine for answering an unwanted phone call. 

“Hey, Hop,” he said, phone held limply away from his ear, “been forever, eh? To what do I owe the hon--” 

“Can it, Wheeler, I want to make this quick, I actually have work to get back to.” 

A lot can change in a short time--not Hopper though. 

“Right, sorry. What can I do for you, Hop?” 

“Well, Wheeler, it just so happens that my daughter has gone missing recently. She didn’t pack any bags or leave any notes, up and left it seems, not a word to anyone. Funny, ain’t it? Her disappearing without a trace, only a couple months after you two had that big fight.” 

“It wasn’t a  _ big  _ fight, it was just a fight. Plus, people break up all the time. Why am I even a suspect? Did you ever consider the fact that she just, I don’t know, ran away? Who wouldn’t want to get out of Hawkins.”

Hopper sat on that rapid answer for a short while. Mike wished he could reel every single word back in before Hawkin’s police chief ate it up, but it was too late. He could hear the cogs turn on the other end of the line, Hopper’s staggered breathing indicating a man in deep thought. 

“In any case, Wheeler, I’m just following up on some leads. You understand why some of us here might have some suspicions about you, leaving so suddenly and all.” 

“Like I said,  _ Hopper _ , who wouldn’t want to get out of Hawkins first chance they get. Maybe El finally did realize that.” Wait, no, stop. “Maybe she realized that everyone who stays in that town ends up a loser, in a dead end life with nowhere else to go but 6ft in the ground.” This won’t help your cause. “So, the next time you want to ask me where your daughter is, why not try looking just a bit further than the end of your fucking drive way!” 

It felt like the right moment to slam the phone down on the metaphorical receiver (thumbing a button on screen doesn’t have the same effect) and yet Mike stayed on. It had been a flash of anger and now the adrenaline was dissipating. What had he done? 

“In any case,” Hopper repeated wearily, “you’ll be hearing from me again.” Then the line went dead. Mike barely had time to process the single sentence before the static ringing of a dead line filled his ear. 

Then it processed. 

“Block, block, how do you block a number? Block that shit,” he mumbled to himself while he frantically blocked his ex girlfriend's father from ever calling him again. Terrible idea in terms of securing his innocence; brilliant idea in terms of securing his mental health. 

It was only then that Mike began to feel the full gravity of everything he’d just learned. El missing, him suspected. What a crazy, stupid, outrageous fucking idea. They broke up in August and it was already October, why would he wait 3 whole months to kidnap his ex?  _ Why  _ would he kidnap his ex? Was no one else but him bothering to think of the logical questions? It didn’t make sense. He was angry, sure, but not angry enough to commit criminal felonies! 

It was happening again. Mike was bubbling with an undeserved anger that boiled over and made a mess everywhere. He needed to close the lid. Breathe. Let the hot air out. He wasn’t going to explode this time. 

Meditation was cut short by a knock at the door. It was a light knock, and Mike had to think hard on whether he’d really heard a knock at all. He’d moved to Seattle less than a few months ago, and he didn’t know anyone in the city, really. Who would he know well enough to come knocking on his apartment door? How did they even get through the front door without being buzzed in? 

The more and more his life started to feel like a mystery novel, the more Mike wished he’d become a romance writer. At least then his mom would be proud of him.

He tiptoed to the door like a church mouse. His apartment was nearly pitch black, so he could see the light coming through the bottom of the door--he could see the shadow swaying back and forth. 

With the last of his nerves used up for the day, he asked, “Who is it?” 

The shadow stopped swaying. It didn’t answer but stood like a statue now, awaiting entrance. 

Mike spoke again. “I paid my rent to, uh, Miss Jezebel, last, uh, last Tuesday. So if that’s what you’re here for, then, uh, I’m sorry? Already taken care of, sorry.” 

The shadow remained. Mike considered, if but for a brief moment, calling his landlord and inquiring about the lack of peepholes in this dumb building. Privacy be damned, he wanted answers! 

The shadow knocked again. Anger taking over, Mike threw open the door. 

“What the fuck do you w--” he stopped. His heart stopped, lungs seized, limbs numbed, time frozen. “El?” 


	2. Chapter 2

Love is simple. 

That’s all she could think when she looked at him. His sun swept hair, freckled face, and big eyes, so big she could see her reflection in them like a still lake. He was so handsome, even more so with that pointed smile glancing at her in intervals as he spoke. 

“This is going to be the greatest weekend ever. You’re never going to guess where I’m taking you. It was months of preparation and planning and gathering the stuff and the food and I had to go to this one special deli market on the outside of town--you wouldn’t know it--and they didn’t have this one special salami but the guy told me there was this one shop in the city over, run by his brother! They kept the salami in the back for special orders, and the guy told me to tell his brother that Ishmael--that’s his name, the guy--Ishmael sent me so his brother would know that I’m  _ the guy  _ and he’d sell me some of the special salami and--”

“Mike!”

“Yeah?” 

“The road.” 

“Oh!” His head jerked forward, smile foolishly faltering as he adjusted to his new position. “Right, sorry.” 

“It’s okay. So, special salami?” 

“Right, so I got the special salami, and that was the last thing on my list, and that was why I was late picking you up, because, you know, next town over.” 

“I didn’t even notice you were late.” 

“Oh. You mean I could’ve just gotten away with it?” 

“You mean lie to me?” 

He laughed. “Lying by omission, is that technically lying?” 

“Mike!” She slapped him softly on the arm. “Of course it is!” 

Another laugh. “Okay, okay! You’re right, that’s totally lying. But I’m  _ not  _ lying when I say that this. Is going. To be. The best. Weekend. Of. Your. Life.” And a wink to seal the deal. 

Love is simple. He makes love simple. 

\-- 

“Move, dickhead.” She shoved past him like a log through a window, shattering every piece of him so he couldn’t move, speak, or do anything. She dropped her coat and purse on the couch and maneuvered to the open-concept kitchen post-haste! Liquor had been one of the great many utilities she had to do without on the road. Next would be the bathroom, but her priorities were strictly organized towards greater needs at the moment.

“Bacardi? You would, wouldn’t you.” She popped the cap and made headway towards the lavatories. 

Mike was still a pile of dust by the time the door to his ensuite bathroom shut. Like the Sandman before him, he dragged himself out of the ashes and arose a new man. A new man who was riddled with a buzzing anxiety, a bundle of shot nerves, and, oh fuck, an urgent need to pee. 

The boy was a bubbling cauldron of man’s worst flaws in the face of one’s better half. She wasn’t his better half, of course, but Jesus H Christ, Mike hadn’t really seen  _ any  _ women as of late, let alone  _ this  _ woman right fucking now! He’d barely left his apartment after returning from the press tour, barely spoke to anyone outside his editor, publisher, and publicist, and even that was beginning to weigh on him more and more each conversation. For Michael Wheeler this was a situation straight out of the  _ Twilight Zone  _ if the  _ Twilight Zone  _ had been produced in hell! 

Oh he needed to run. He needed to run right now. The only logical solution to any situation like this is to run. To his balcony. And over the ledge. Here we go boys, go time. 

No this is stupid, just call the police. The police will come and take her away and he’ll never have to think about it ever again. 

Are you insane? She’s barely broken any laws, chill out. 

She has to die. 

“Are you still standing there?” She slammed the empty bottle on the counter, jolting him out of...whatever that was. The bathroom light was still on. He couldn’t decide if her doing it on purpose would be more or less annoying. 

“What? Yeah. Yeah I’m just, um... I don’t know actually. Why are you here?” 

She snorted. “It’s a funny story, actually.” A thorough rummaging of the liquor cabinet produced a thick, glass bottle of some dark, vile liquid Mike had long forgotten about in the face of mass productions of mojitos--an addictive parting gift from their trip to Mexico that one summer. She continued speaking over the preparation of drinks. “So you know my dad. Not Hopper, my real one, what’s his face. Anyway, he died about a week ago.” 

“Oh my god, El, I’m so sorr--” 

“Yeah so anyway, he left me an inheritance. Apparently he wanted to make up for, you know, abandoning me and my mom when I was a baby. In any case, according to the lawyer who called me when he died, the inheritance is a pretty little nest egg that dad’s been adding to since I was born. How cute. Blegh.” She took a shot. “So, I’m gonna be rich. One condition though, and it’s a kicker. Oh, is it ever a kicker. He couldn’t make it easy for me, not even in the end.” She snorted again. “That mother fucker. That dumb, stupid, ignorant, selfish, useless, asshole!--” 

She was cut off by her own hiccup. Her face was blotchy from the drinking and wet from the crying, and she covered it in her arms and leaned hard against the counter. Her sobbing was soft and quiet and you might even miss it if you weren’t listening, but Mike was listening. And he was unsure of how to proceed while his drunk ex girlfriend cried in the middle of his kitchen. Normally hugs and kisses would be flying, but circumstances had changed, and to what extent, Mike was gravely unsure. 

“His brother,” she finally said, her face drying up some. “He made his brother executor of his estate. The only way I can claim my inheritance is if his brother signs off on it.” 

Mike thought about it for a few very dumb seconds. “So what’s the problem?” 

She looked at him with eyes filled with so many hateful and angry emotions that the urge to carve through him with laser-vision was all too powerful in her heart. A knife would have to do someday. 

“The problem, you fucking numb skull, is that his brother has been missing for like, forever or something. No one’s heard from him for years, he could be dead for anyone knows. But, unless I can provide a death certificate for him too, my dad’s money isn’t going anywhere. It might as well be buried with him.” 

Mike took more time this round to think. “Oh, that sucks,” he said, a promising start. “Forgive me for asking, given the, uh, circumstances, but what does that have to do with you being here?” He wrung his hands and glanced at the door to check if it was unlocked. Was he faster than a bottle flying through the air? 

“Oh, right. Well, I went rummaging through some of my mom’s shit that I kept, and I found a photo of my dad and his brother.” She walked over to her purse and pulled out a polaroid photo and handed it to Mike on her way back to the kitchen. 

It was a color photo of two men and a woman standing on a street somewhere on a bright summer day. The two men have their arms around each other’s shoulders, and the man on the left has his arm around the waist of the short brunette woman. Thankfully it didn’t take a genius to see the resemblance, with small features on both the man and the woman next to him reflecting perfectly on the face staring at Mike from the kitchen.

“Those are your parents,” he said incredulously, holding up the photo like it was her first time seeing it. 

“Very good, Sherlock, please do tell what other deductions you have made.” 

He turned the photo back on himself. They were standing on a sidewalk. The cars looked old. Clothing was pretty dated. Nothing to distinguish a time or place--wait, that, in the background. Way, way behind them, above them, peeking through the clouds: the Space Needle. 

“Seattle! This picture was taken in Seattle.” 

She spoke a bit more seriously. “That’s right, they were from here. Or, they’ve at least been here, and that’s a start. You can just make out a sign in the left corner of a bar that used to be there,  _ The Flying Irishman _ . I looked it up and found the old address. It’s a coffee shop now but I at least know exactly where the picture was taken. I’m going there tomorrow to ask around, see if anyone remembers them around there. It’s a shit start but it’s the only one I got.” 

It was detective work worthy of a novel itself, and Mike thought about jotting it down real quick when she wasn’t looking. But she wasn’t taking her eyes off him, Mike feeling as though there were a magnet buried deep inside him; an eye-magnet, that is. 

She still hadn’t answered the real question, and the more shots she took (it was something like 5 now, if Mike was keeping track well) the more pressing he felt the question became. 

“And before you ask,” she said, proving her telepathic abilities survived still, “I’m here because I didn’t want to pay for a hotel. And I got your address from Max who got it from Lucas who got it from Dustin, so I figured I might as well use it. Such a coincidence, you know, it was kind of hard to pass up. Seattle hotels are stupid expensive.”

Of course they told her, what are distant friends for if not to be pools of endless information for anyone to dive into. Was it even worth the phone calls to give them both shit? Bet. 

“Okay, wait,” Mike waved away all of this unnecessary in-the-past nonsense to focus on the real stuff. “Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were going? Hopper called me because everyone in town thinks I kidnapped you or something. You have to call him and set everything straight.” 

“Oh,” she cooed, then sneered, “poor thing. Everyone thinks the shitbag is a shitbag now, how awful. Grow up, Wheeler, you’re not going to get arrested. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and I doubt anyone would have let me do this, from my dad to work. Plus, I had to get away for awhile. Everyone in that town is insufferable sometimes, sometimes all the time. I just needed something new, to get out of that rut. Get out of that town.” 

Mike felt her words echo inside of him. Even in their worst times, he felt like they were the same person, with the same thoughts and feelings about everything. She may not be his better half but she was still half of him, or he was half of her, or something like that, he couldn’t really explain. The thought made him feel heavy, like these feelings were weighing him down. He needed to get out of that town, too, and soon. 

“You can sleep on the couch. I’ll get it set up in a minute, I just need to pee first.” 

“More time to drink before bed,” he heard her say as he passed. 

He closed the door softly behind him, straining to hinder any noise as he did. He needed to breathe for a minute. He needed to think. No, he needed to stop thinking. He was thinking about her. It was all he could think about the minute she stepped through that door, and how could he not! God, it had been so long. It was barely any time at all, really, and it was the longest time Mike had ever lived through. He hated her, God did he ever hate. But that wasn’t true. Or was it? Fuck, he didn’t know! He didn’t know what to feel, he hadn’t had enough time to decide how he was going to feel the next time he saw her. He thought that would be months, maybe even years from now. He thought something would change with time. But it felt like nothing had changed. They were still there, in that room, screaming at each other. They weren’t screaming this time, but it was all the same. No time had passed between then and now; time had frozen when they parted. Now here she was, ready to get it moving again. And the worst part was that she wasn’t even here for that. She was here because she needed a place to sleep, and in the grand scheme of things, he figured he owed her this one. 

“Hey, dipshit!” she screamed from down the hall. “Get a move on, I have a long day ahead of me!” 

He was wrong; the screaming was still there. 


End file.
